I got the earring repaired. After my years of living with Siamese cats I was an expert at mending things myself, or tracking down somebody who could. My cousin Dee happened to be going to jewellery classes at the time. Her tutor was a craftsman jeweller, and he repaired the earring as if it had never been damaged. It cost a pretty penny, of course, and what he thought when he heard a cat had done it is anybody's guess, but I put it down to experience, transferred the earrings to the cupboard above the wardrobe, and girded myself once more to face the fray.
So passed the summer, with Saphra continually in trouble. I wouldn't have changed him for worlds, but the affairs of the village passed me by more or less at a distance. Certainly with very little impact. The Friendly Hands Club came back from their holiday jaunt, Mrs Binney not yet having officially landed her catch, though the general opinion of those who'd accompanied them was that it couldn't be very long now. Except, that was, for Fred Ferry's father Sam, who'd gone along the trip himself, arthritis and all, and whose comment was that that Tooting bloke was an adjectival twit and if Maude married he so was she.
It seemed that Mr Tooting had tried to show Sam how best to mount the steps to a museum with the aid of his stick. Sam, having a temper like his son's – and more sense, he'd informed his would-be mentor, than any ruddy townie wearin' a piddlin' pig-keeper's hat – had poked Mr Tooting in the knee with the stick to move him out of the way, Mr Tooting had fallen down the steps, and the coach party had had its biggest laugh of the holiday. The two were not now speaking to each other, and another village feud was in existence.
Nearer home, Poppy Richards had moved into her cottage and was busy settling in and interesting herself in local affairs. She seemed much more sensible than her sister, from what I'd seen of her. She liked Saphra and stopped to talk to him when she went by, and had been added to his list of friends.
Still nearer home, down the lane past Father Adams, Janet and Peter Reason had added four geese and half a dozen ducks to the two horses, labrador dog and tabby cat they already owned, and things had livened up no end. The Reasons had a considerable amount of land, spreading up towards me in one direction and almost the whole of the rest of the way down the valley in the other. The lane, a rough-surfaced bridletrack, ran through the middle of it, fenced only where it passed the horses' field, and for the rest of its length open to the Reasons' low cottage terrace on the right-hand side and their large parking area and stretch of woodland on the other. A wonderful place for a swashbuckling gander and his entourage to wander abroad in, and wander and swashbuckle they did.
Almost any hour of the day except after lunch, when they took a siesta on the sloping lawn above the terrace, Gerald the gander and his wives could be seen marching up the lane, down the hill, or past my side gate and up the forestry track, swaying from side to side like a quartet of outsize skittles, honking to let the world know they were coming and followed, like children trailing a Salvation Army band, by a huddle of quacking ducks.
They ventured incredible distances – far up the lane beyond me, stopping to look in at the gateways of the two other cottages along the route and honk defiance at the Alsatian which thrust its head through a cat-flap in the door of one of them and barked; way up the hill to the farm where they would peer patronisingly in at the unenterprising farm geese in their paddock; on to the Rose and Crown on the corner, before turning, and parading slowly back. Always with Gerald in front like a standard-bearer and the ducks bringing up the rear. And, as the weeks went by and nobody opposed him, with Gerald growing more belligerent.
He offered to fight Fred Ferry whenever they met on the hill. Fred, being a countryman and used to geese, merely swung his knapsack to fend him off and said 'Why dussn't thee go and pester Old Pans?' (Old Pans, incidentally, wasn't nearly as dim as Fred thought she was. When Gerald passed she was usually inside her gate with the bolt on, throwing bread across to land outside Fred's.) Any time walkers ventured down the lane to Gerald's own cottage he stood in the middle of it and dared them, and the walkers usually turned back. Aided by his army, too, Gerald had a wonderful time every Friday morning, when the men from the Council came to check the swallet.
Our local swallet is in the stream bank further up in the forest, and when the stream swells after heavy rain the surplus water, in theory, goes down the swallet into underground caves and comes out, as has been proved by putting dye in it, in a village pond five miles away. If, however, the swallet is blocked by silt and stones brought down by the force of the water, the stream overflows its banks, rushes down like the Lynn in full spate, and washes away the lane surface.
To prevent this, once a week two hefty Council workers parked their van outside my cottage, strolled up to the swallet carrying spades, cleared it of any blockage, ambled back checking the ditch for debris and overhanging brambles, went on down to the Reasons' to check there was no obstruction where the stream crossed the bridleway into the horses' field, then ambled back for a cigarette and an appreciative breath of valley air before heading off back to base.
That was how it was before the coming of Gerald and his supporters. After that, the moment the Council van stopped outside, a procession would appear coming up the lane – a procession in a hurry this time: no time for honking – and when the men opened the van doors to get out they would find themselves confronted by four geese hissing away like steam jets against a backcloth of excited ducks. By dint of brandishing their spades the men would manage to get past them and up the lane to see to the swallet. It was when they returned that the real fun would start. As they passed the van and started down the Reasons' lane, the geese would emerge from behind my coal-shed, where they'd been waiting, and close in behind them. Hissing, rattling their big orange bills, feinting with outstretched necks at the men's legs and having a whale of a time.
One of the men was pretty good at avoiding them. The other, a big bearded man a good six feet tall, was scared stiff and usually ended up doing a sort of jig on the spot, surrounded by geese and ducks and yelling for help. When that happened, if Janet was home she would come to his rescue. If she'd gone to work then I'd go out, wave my crook at them and the geese would disperse. Laughing their heads off by the look of them. I never heard of them actually hurting anybody. And, as Janet said, she couldn't keep them shut in. She was away all day; they were there to eat down the grass; and eat the grass – and police the valley – they did most successfully.
It was mostly the Council men they intimidated, but occasionally they had a go at me. Sometimes, if I was going to town, I would reverse the car out of the garage and park it in front of the cottage before I changed out of my jeans. Up would hurry the geese, ready for their favourite sport, and I would have to open an umbrella at them before I could get out. I kept a red umbrella ready on the passenger seat, and the sight of me backing behind it like a matador towards the safety of my front gate intrigued many a visitor to the valley. Visitors in cars, that was. Nobody would have ventured out on foot.